She's Cape Cod's Irish Rose

By Joe BurnsContributing Writer

Thursday

Mar 14, 2019 at 5:00 AMMar 15, 2019 at 4:06 PM

Celtic fiddler Rose Clancy wasn’t born in Ireland, but Ireland was born in her.

Clancy – who’ll perform on St. Patrick’s Day at the Cape Cod Museum of Art as part of its Music and More concert series, then later that day at the Chatham Squire restaurant – was raised on Irish traditional music.

Clancy’s father, Eugene, who hails from County Armagh, in Northern Ireland, had performed in both the north and south areas of Ireland with the Clancy Brothers Ceili Band. In the early ‘60s, he and two brothers toured and recorded in America, calling themselves the Irish Ramblers to distinguish themselves from the Clancy Brothers singing group.

“There was music all the time in our house, great musicians coming by,” says Clancy, who was born and raised in the Bronx. “It was all Irish music. I would say it was probably the first music I had ever heard, and I heard a lot of it growing up, so it became part of my DNA, I think, just being surrounded by it.

“One guy in particular I remember. A musician friend of my father’s. He would stand in the living room and play his fiddle. I was probably 3 or 4. It was mesmerizing. That’s really where I just really wanted to learn how to play the fiddle,” says Clancy.

She has continued to make fiddling a part of her life in different ways.

Currently, Clancy performs as a member of the Clancy Tradition, a family group that’s been together since the ‘80s and still performs occasionally.

“It’s made up of members of the family, my Uncle Pat (on accordion), and my father, of course, and my brother John, playing the upright bass and myself on fiddle and my cousin, my Uncle Pat’s daughter Liadain, a beautiful singer. We also have a family friend, who I grew up with, Michael Melanophy, a great button-row accordion player.”

Clancy, who owns the Chatham Fiddle Company, also performs with her father at her Chatham shop on Tuesday nights in the summer months. She performs many Sunday nights at the Chatham Squire, and has played with multiple other musicians, including Robbie O’Connell and, including Sunday at the art museum and a Harwich concert last week, with vocalist/guitarist Max Cohen.

Clancy has recorded two albums under her own name, “Sessions at the Chatham Fiddle Company,” with her father, and a self-titled CD with Brendan Dolan. She’s also recorded “Live at the Towne Crier” as a member of the Clancy Tradition.

The music that Clancy performs includes music from Scotland and Cape Breton as well as Ireland, along with some American and French-Canadian tunes.

“I’ve always enjoyed playing different types of Celtic music,” says Clancy, whose father also gave her early exposure to music from Scotland and Cape Breton.

“There’s a lot of Scottish influence in my father’s music. Because they were from the north, they would tend to get the BBC radio from out of Scotland before they would get anything from the south of Ireland. My father listened to a tremendous amount of Scottish music when he was growing up and also has great love for Scottish dance music, so when we were kids, he’d get these tapes that his brother would send over, and we’d have to listen to them in the car everywhere we went. And at the time, you don’t realize it, but it influenced me that now I greatly appreciate that music,” Clancy says.

“My father (also) had a good friend, Jack McNamara, and he loved Cape Breton music, He’d send cassettes to people to listen to. My father had a quite a few of these cassettes.

“At first, I don’t think I liked (Cape Breton music) that much but as time went on, I started to understand it more.”

Clancy says Sunday’s museum concert with Cohen will include a combination of those genres. While the differences between the various Celtic music might not be discernible to the untrained ear, she says, there are distinct differences.

“Scottish music tends to be more dotted and sharper, with less ornamentation in it. Irish music tends to be a little more smooth and fluid with more ornamentation in it. And Cape Breton music is a lot of Scottish music that was brought to Cape Breton when Scottish people emigrated (there), but they’ve made that music their own and it has its own kind of aggressiveness to it, especially in the fiddle playing.

“It’s interesting,” Clancy says, “because some of these tunes exist in all of these places but they’re given a different treatment.”

Clancy, who plans on recording a third album later this year, says that the joy she first received as a child from fiddling has never waned.

“I never felt like not doing it anymore. That never happened,” Clancy says. “It’s really fun to perform and to share your music with people.”

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.